Thursday, June 09, 2005

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #2!

This is the second in a series of examination of comic book urban legends and whether they are true or false. The first one can be found here (spurred on by me falling for an urban legend regarding Walt Simonson keeping a list of Doom Bot appearances during his Fantastic Four run).

Let's begin!!

COMIC URBAN LEGEND: Youngblood was a reworking of a pitch Rob Liefeld made to DC for Team Titans.

STATUS: True

Yes, amusingly enough, in the early 90s, Liefeld was in negotiations with DC to create a spin-off title of the Titans, tentatively called either Titans Force or Team Titans.

From an interview with Newsarama, here is Liefeld discussing the situation:

Question: And for fans who may not know, in the early ‘90s you were in negotiations with DC about doing a Titans limited series with Arsenal and Speedy which eventually morphed into...

Liefeld: I proposed a new Titans book in 1991, Team Titans was the proposal, Jon Peterson who edited the book approved it, Marv Wolfman signed on to co-write it and then I couldn't make the deal with Dick Giordano. God bless him, we just couldn't make the numbers work. So I took my proposal and merged it with an existing indie project I had called Youngblood. Next thing you know, POOF...Image comics was born.

Question: Can you tell us about the circumstances surrounding that time and that project?

Liefeld: Shaft was intended to be Speedy. Vogue was a new Harlequin design, Combat was a Kh'undian warrior circa the Legion of Super Heroes, ditto for Photon and Die Hard was a Star Labs android. I forgot who Chapel was supposed to be. So there you have it, the secret origin of Youngblood.

Thanks to Ian Gould for the suggestion!

COMIC URBAN LEGEND: Jim Steranko was the inspiration for the escape artist character in Michael Chabon's Kavalier and Klay as well as Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle.

STATUS: True

This is actually a three-part legend. The first part is "Was Jim Steranko an escape artist?" and the second and third parts are "Did Chabon base the escape artist character on Steranko?" and "Did Kirby base Mister Miracle on Steranko?"

The answer is yes to all three.

Steranko was, indeed, an escape artist during the 1950s, well before he became a notable comic book artist.

In his early teens, he spent several summers with circuses and carnivals, eventually working his way up to sideshow performer, where he did fire-eating, the Hindu bed of nails, and sleight-of-hand effects on stage. In school, he joined the gymnastic team, specializing in the flying rings and parallel bars. Later, he focused on boxing and fencing, studying the latter with saber and foil master Dan Phillips in New York City.

By the time he was in his late teens, Steranko had reaped a wealth of newspaper and TV publicity as an escape artist, after being laced into straitjackets and suspended by his heels; shackled with a dozen pairs of handcuffs and locked into prison cells by police officials; entombed in huge vaults; buried beneath the earth; tied to giant ferris wheels; nailed into packing crates, stuffed into government mailbags and dropped to the bottom of rivers in the confines of heavy trunks (his death-defying performances inspired the character Mister Miracle). Almost always, he'd free himself in less time than than it took to lock him up!.

As for the Kavalier and Clay connection, here is what Michael Chabon had to say on the point (from Wizard #122...courtesy of Nate Raymond, who has an awesome Kavalier and Clay website), "I was westling with the question of how to get my character of Joe Kavalier out of Nazi-occupied Prague when I read an article about Steranko's career as an escape artist. So both Kavalier and the Escapist share the same inspiration as Kirby's Mister Miracle."

And as for the last point, DID Kirby use Steranko as his inspiration for Mister Miracle?

Well, I have not been able to find any statement by Kirby himself on the subject, but Mark Evanier is about as reliable as you can get for Kirby info, and here is what he has to say on his great Kirby FAQ, "[T]he characterization between Scott "Mr. Miracle" Free and Barda was based largely — though with tongue in cheek — on the interplay betwixt Jack and his wife Roz. Of course, the whole 'escape artist' theme was inspired by an earlier career of writer-artist Jim Steranko."

COMIC URBAN LEGEND: Fawcett Comics had to stop publishing Captain Marvel because it lost a copyright lawsuit brought by DC Comics.

STATUS: A lot of truth to it, but the basic assertion that Fawcett was forced to stop publishing Captain Marvel due to a court decision is false.

Here is the straight story, right from the mouth of noted comic legal expert, Bob Ingersoll,

DC (here a shorthand for National Periodicals Publications, Inc.) sued Fawcett over Captain Marvel claiming copyright infringement At the trial, the court ruled that Captain Marvel did infringe on DC's copyright on Superman (citing to the former Superman/Wonderman lawsuit as precedent). Specific panels of Captain Marvel flying and performing deeds were used in evidence to show his adventures and exploits swiped those of Superman.

But the trial court also ruled that DC (or NPP as it was called back then) couldn't enforce its copyright, because it had abandoned it. The basis for this ruling was that the Superman comic strip, which the McClure Syndicate did under a license from NPP, did not include any of the necessary copyright notices which are required by law to secure and maintain a copyright. So, the trial court ruled that NPP had abandoned its copyright on Superman and couldn't enforce it. This was a victory for Fawcett. The court ruled it did violate copyright, but also ruled NPP couldn't enforce the copyright.

The federal court of appeals in New York affirmed the trial court in part and reversed the trial court's decision in part. The court of appeals agreed that Captain Marvel violated NPP's copyright on Superman. It also ruled that NPP hadn't abandoned its copyright. It noted that an intent to abandon copyright has to be clear and unequivocal. NPP continued to attach copyright notices to the Superman comics that it published, so any intent to abandon the copyright wasn't unequivocal. The Court of Appeals also ruled that NPP couldn't be held responsible for the lapses of its licensee, McClure. For those reasons, NPP didn't abandon its copyright on Superman and could enforce it.

The Court of Appeals sent the case back to the trial court for more proceedings. At this point, Fawcett had already lost the important question, did it violate NPP's copyright. It knew it would lose the trial. At the same time, sales on CAPTAIN MARVEL had declined. So Fawcett chose to settle, rather than go on with a trial it knew it would lose to publish a character that was slipping. In the settlement, Fawcett agreed not to publish Captain Marvel anymore.

Thanks to Paul Newell for the suggestion!

So there you go!

Feel free to suggest urban legends you'd like to see debunked (or confirmed) in a future installment!

11 Comments:

Let's be accurate: One fairly minor detail of Joe Kavalier is based on Steranko. The character also includes large servings of Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Seigel & Shuster, and many other comics pioneers.

As far as I know, Jim Steranko was not born in Europe, was not a Holocaust refugee, did not create any Golden Age characters, did not serve in the armed forces in Antarctica, did not have a lengthy affair with the Saks Fifth Avenue heiress, etc and etc.

Saying that Kavalier is based on Steranko because they were both escape artists is like saying Superman is based on Clark Gable because they share the same first name.

Kirby could have based Mister Miracle on Steranko, but frankly, having read Steranko's bio (which smacks of runaway self-promotion), and without any other source for the rumor (Evanier doesn't say what his source is; it could just as well have been Steranko), I have to take this with a grain of salt.

I dunno, it's Mark Evanier. I don't think there's a person out there who knows more about Jack Kirby than Evanier. And seeing as how it is a fairly innocuous thing, I'm willing to believe Evanier's take on it.

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